Enhancing professional excellence: Developing motivational strategies of pre-service teachers in Chinese language classrooms

According to the Chinese Language Education - Curriculum Document (Education Bureau, 2017), the learning objectives of the language include nurturing learners' interest, attitudes and habits in learning Chinese language. Nevertheless, teaching and learning of Chinese language has been focused on developing four skills and language learning strategies of learners. In order to enhance the understanding and knowledge of motivational strategies of pre-service Chinese language teachers, the project aims to adopt blended learning in the Chinese pedagogy related courses of BEd (CHL) and PGDE (S) programs. The outcomes of the project include, i) creating teaching videos introducing motivational strategies in Chinese language classroom; ii) develop the skills of students in employing various motivational strategies in their teaching; iii) establish a teaching video corpus of motivational strategies in Chinese language classrooms; iv) create a motivational strategies handbook for Chinese language teachers. Dörnyei’s (2007) Motivational Strategies Framework will be adopted as it provides the pre-service teachers with practical, systematic, flexible references of how to motivate learners at different stages, levels or contexts. The project also includes questionnaire and focus group interview data which could not only provide pedagogical insights for the teacher training programs at EdUHK but also enhance the teaching competence and professional excellence of both pre-service and in-service teachers.